Luisa de Bustamante

Luisa de Bustamante is the story of a young Spanish woman in London. The plot begins with the encounter between the author and a dying Miguel de Bustamante, Luisa’s father. It continues among several London neighborhoods and families summoned to consider Luisa’s adoption. José María Blanco White takes advantage of his story to reflect on life in England, and the cultural, economic and religious differences between it and Spain.
It describes a tremendously monetized society. In it the nouveau riche of a growing and enterprising class buy social prestige. Thus, in this ritual, having a preceptor for your children is a key piece.
Luisa de Bustamante moves in a world of backstage and adventure. The determined and frank character of Luisa de Bustamante is portrayed by Blanco White. His character unfolds in the midst of multiple adventures and allusions to the underworld. The bad tastes and prejudices of nineteenth-century England are also recounted.

No one, whom nature has not entirely denied the faculty of observation, can spend a month in London without noticing the great difference between walking east and west of that immense city. Three or four miles in either direction are enough to move abroad, not so much from one city to another, but from one world to another. If, taking the great cathedral of St. Paul as a central point, we go to the western term (West End), at every step we are presented with buildings, I will not say more grandiose than some of the city of London properly so called, but that breathe taste, that announce in their interior the pleasures of civilization and of a wealth not exposed to vicissitudes. Even the houses of private individuals and the lower middle class show more stillness and more cleanliness. If we continue in the same direction to what they call the Campaign (The Country), although it has very little right to such a name, we shall soon find ourselves breathing a purer air, enjoying a freer light, and, in the midst of the incessant bustle, which is not diminished on the royal roads but at a distance of a few leagues, We can not but enjoy some rest. The several villas, which join each other forming a very wide street, are composed of clean, ventilated and comfortable houses, being among them not infrequently rooms that are truly palaces.

Fragment of the work